The Apprentice Dragons

The Apprentice Dragons by Alison Baird is now in print and available from Lulu.com! Last summer I had these dragons on the drawing board, large dragons and little scampering ones that wouldn't behave. I finally pinned them down the page, chapter heading by chapter heading, merry companions for this delightful junior novel.

The sequel to The Dragon's Egg , The Apprentice Dragons picks up the incidental adventure of the goldfish, the "apprentice dragons" as they were called by the boy dragon, Lung Wang. Lung Wang returned to his ancestral home but Ai Lien's goldfish stayed in their bowl on the little girl's dresser.

Or did they?

It really is a terrific adventure,

with enough tantalizing threads for the reader to know that the story is not necessarily over yet.

Dragons on the drawing board

Our summer adventures brought us safely home again and I am back to work with pencil and paint. The pleasant task at hand is the art for the sequel to The Dragon's Egg, cover art above. I was well into it before we left on holiday and the dragons were waiting for me on our return.

Written by Alison Baird, The Dragon's Egg (a national bestseller and Regional Winner of the Silver Birch Award) was first published in 1994. My young model for the girl has since grown up but fortunately I still have some of the photos of her. The dragon has stayed in my mind, endlessly striking poses to be captured on paper, so I am very glad that the sequel is coming together at last. It is as charming as the original, with wit and adventure, and (not to give too much away) more dragons and magic.

The new cover art is complete, under wraps for now, and some black and white chapter headings are next.

I took my paints and brushes with me on holiday (a fully loaded palette, with fresh blues than softened and ran under the palette cover and combined to make interesting new tones), but it turns out that I am a good sailor only as long as I do not try to draw or paint at sea, so I enjoyed the rest from work and took photos instead. When the dragons are taken care of I'll get back to painting those beautiful blue waters and pink sands.